Many people use airports, especially in the first world. They represent arrival, departure and movement; they are the hubs where people and machines meet. They are part of one single enormous global system, called airspace, and they are closed systems within themselves with runways, taxiways and where both passengers and planes have their own specific spaces.

The choice of airports is very specific, a re-inforcement to the above mentioned organizations: three from the first world, Detroit, New York and Las Vegas, and three from the developing world, Karachi, Damascus and Addis Ababa. In addition to a global split, each airport has a significance, a dark edge, to use a term from insider trading that I just learnt. New York is here, Detroit used to be here and Las Vegas is just a fantasy, all in a country with an uncertain future; Karachi was attacked by terrorists, Damascus is part of a civil war and Addis Ababa is, some believe, the cradle of civilisation.

Drawings of the schematics of airports illustrate many ideas that are part of my practice: information (maps), technology (aircraft), trade (corporations), and land use (nature).

A technical aside: these drawings were made on paper that has creases and that can fold. They are also stored in a single cardboard box, as you never know when you might need all of them.